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Monday, August 1, 2016

'Train To Busan' (2016) Movie Review

It’s been almost 50 years since George Romero defined the
modern zombie in Night of the Living Dead (it’s crazy how
fresh that movie still feels), and those decades have been full of countless
takes on the subgenre. Hell, there are even subgenres within the subgenre—one
of my favorites is the Nazi-zombies-in-bodies-of-water subset. While there have
been monumental achievements using this framework, as time goes on, things have
become stale with age. There’s not much to do that hasn’t been done, but every
once in a while a movie comes along and infuses the undead with a bit of
freshness. Danny Boyle did it with 28 Days Later, and South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho’s latest, Train to Busan, has a
similar effect.

Set almost entirely on a moving train, the “Snowpiercer
with zombies” comparison has been thrown around quite a bit. While that’s not
an entirely inaccurate analogy, it doesn’t paint the whole picture. This movie
is much more than that reductive description.

The set up is straightforward and simple. Seok-woo (Gong
Yoo, The Age of Shadows) works too much at his corporate day
job and has little involvement in the daily life of his young daughter, Su-an
(Kim Su-an). When he takes her to see her estranged mother in Busan, they,
along with the other passengers, become trapped on a speeding train as a zombie
plague engulfs the country outside.

Most known for animated work like The Fake
and The King of Pigs, Yeon Sang-ho makes a seamless transition
to live-action with Train to Busan. Also the writer, he
gives the characters time and space to develop before throwing them to the
wolves. Seok-woo and Su-an’s relationship is nothing we haven’t seen before,
but in a relatively modest span, we feel the full emotional weight and the
sting on both sides.

And when Yeon hits the gas, Train to
Busan roars out of the station and never slows down. The result is
one of the most propulsive, urgent zombie movies in recent memory. Clocking in
at nearly two hours, this is still lean and ferocious, without a wasted stroke
to be found.

Train to Busan mixes breathless action
with ravenous flesh-eaters. And all of the horror business is built upon rich
emotionality and fully realized characters, which lends the action that much
more consequence.

Throughout the breakneck pace, Yeon continues to build the
world and flesh out the characters in subtle, clever ways. Never dumping a
boxcar full of information on the audience in a single moment, the script doles
out the necessary information in well-timed bits and background reveals. An
authentic, lived-in feel permeates the setting.

It would be easy to lose the side characters in the action
and let them be little more than throwaway zombie fodder and cardboard cutouts.
But again, Yeon provides enough detail and allows these people to shine
through. The story of tough guy Sang-hwa (Ma Dong-seok, Doomsday
Book, The Good, the Bad, the Weird) and his pregnant
wife, Seong-kyeong (Jung Yu-min, Silenced), isn’t particularly
surprising, especially if you’ve ever seen a zombie movie before. These
characters and others—like selfish, out-for-himself asshole who will do anything
to survive—could have been background noise, but there’s enough earnest conviction
in the performances, and legitimate connection, investment, and texture, that the
audience cares what happens to them.

Train to Busan doesn’t blaze any new
trails, but it transcends the tricks and tropes of a genre that so often feels
it has nothing more to offer. Vicious and gore-soaked enough to sate hardcore horror
fans, Train to Busan infuses the zombie action with
emotional weight, resonant characters, and a frenetic pace, and the result is
much greater than the simple premise belies. [Grade: A-]